Soul Photo Net -- Photoblog / Weblog

Monday, July 31, 2006

Saddam Dog Looking For New Home

A Great Dane thought to belong to the son of former Iraq dictator, Saddam Hussien has arrived in England and is now looking for a new home. Rocky, who is believed to have been one of Uday’s dogs.

Willem van der Waal, who is a former soldier and prison officer, rescued the dog, who was being tormented and stoned by local children outside of one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces. The dog has since been dubbed ‘Scooby’.

Mr van der Waal, was working in Iraq as a security consultant, had to trade one of his gun’s with a market stall holder to ensure he could take the dog with him.

Mr van der Waal told local press in his native Devon: “The dog was already called Rocky, but people also referred to him as Scooby Doo, as he looks like the cartoon series character.”

Scooby is now being quarantined and it is hoped that a new home can be found for him soon.

Great Danes require an experienced owner and are not dogs to be taken in without ensuring that they are the breed for you.

When Soul Photo Net was small format.

This photo was taken by a photographer while I was in high school in Shreveport, LA. I am probably holding the Pentax ME Super 35mm camera that my aunt Cheryl bought me. This reminds me how long photography has been a part of my life. I was probably 15 or 16 when this picture was taken.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Get and Stay away!

Why do we tell people to stay off of our grass? Don’t most people understand that lawns on private property are automatically off-limits to the uninvited? Photo taken with Fuji FinePix S2 Pro in Rochelle Park, NJ at approx 12:00pm.

“They’re standing on the corner and they can’t speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk: Why you ain’t, Where you is, What he drive, Where he stay, Where he work, Who you be… And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living. People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around. The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids. $500 sneakers for what? And they won’t spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics. I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn’t know that he had a pistol?

And where is the father? Or who is his father? People putting their clothes on backward: Isn’t that a sign of something gone wrong? People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn’t that a sign of something? Or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn’t it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body? What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don’t know a thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of them are in jail.

Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back. People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different ‘husbands’—or men or whatever you call them now. We have millionaire football players who cannot read. We have million-dollar basketball players who can’t write two paragraphs. We as black folks have to do a better job. Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard. We cannot blame the white people any longer”.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Comedian Mo’Nique Booted From Plane in Chicago

Comedian Mo’Nique was booted off a United Airlines flight in Chicago after a spat with a flight attendant and is calling for a boycott of the airlines.

The entertainer was en route to New York on Sunday to tape two episodes of “The View,” where she reportedly is being considered as a replacement for the departed Star Jones, when the incident occurred.

Mo’Nique, whose full name is Mo’Nique Imes, told the New York Daily News that a flight attendant challenged the star’s stylist when she put a hair dryer in a first-class bin. Mo’Nique was flying in the front of the cabin, but her assistant was in coach.

After an exchange of words, Mo’Nique told the newspaper the attendant told her: “Tell your people that the next time they have an attitude, they are being thrown off. ... Since 9/11, we don’t play around.”

Mo’Nique told radio listeners at WBLS in New York that she intended to boycott the airline and urged listeners to do the same. Yesterday afternoon, the Rev. Al Sharpton discussed the incident on his radio show and vowed his support.

BlackAmericaWeb.com’s efforts to reach the star or her management team directly were not successful.

“The safety of all of our passengers and our crew is our top priority, and that we regret that Ms. Imes felt in any way that she was not treated with courtesy and respect,” Robin Urbanski, spokesperson for the United Airlines press office told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

“When a situation occurs on a flight that causes a delay, or disruption, we must act in the best interest of all of our customers,” Urbanski said. “It was determined that the best course of action was to accommodate Ms. Imes on a later flight.”

Mo’Nique isn’t the only celebrity to run afoul of flight attendants.

In December, Victoria Osteen, wife of Joel Osteen, televangelist and pastor of the Houston-based Lakewood Church, was removed from a Continental airlines flight to Vail, Colo., after she “failed to comply” with a flight attendant’s request, according to a report filed by the airline to the FBI.

The partner of a British soccer star was kicked off a flight to the World Cup when she reportedly threw a tantrum when she was told she was carrying too much hand luggage.

Getting into a tiff with a flight attendant, even over something seemingly simple, could get the passenger ejected from the flight, at best. At worst, the passenger could face a fine or be jailed if the behavior is deemed an FAA violation. Interfering with a flight attendant is considered a federal offense.

“The bottom line is even if (the flight attendants) are overreacting they still have the final say,” Keith Alexander, who covers the airline industry for The Washington Post, told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

“The only thing you can do,” he said, “is to bite your lip until you get where you are going” before complaining about treatment.

Corey Caldwell, spokesperson for the Association of Flight Attendants, concurs.
“It is against the law to interfere with a cabin crew member,” Caldwell told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “And the language that defines interference is pretty wide, so there isn’t a lot of leeway.”
Caldwell said that flight attendants face a lot of pressure because they work long hours and there is a lot of work to do between quick turnarounds on flights.

“There is a lot to be done in a short amount of time. The job is high stress and you’re dealing with so many different types of personalities, not only among your co-workers but with your passengers,” she said.

“You combine these external factors of little sleep, fatigue, long hours, planes that don’t work right sometimes, combined with anything that jeopardizes the safety and security of the cabin” and you have a formula for low-tolerance for flippant remarks or arguments, Caldwell said.

Caldwell could not address the situation with Mo’Nique. “We’re not privy to the report of that instance,” Caldwell said, because airlines are not obligated to make public reports filed with the FAA after an incident.

“It’s not a clear-cut thing, if you talk back or you hit or you do this, this is what happens,” Caldwell told BlackAmericaWeb.com. The cabin crew has ultimate discretion, though, to interpret interference and to take action.

Carl Brashear, ‘Men of Honor’ diver, dies at 75

For those that don’t know he was The First African-American Navy master diver restored to service as an amputee

If you haven’t seen “Men of Honor” please do. It is a touching story and shows his dedication to his craft. We all should be so dedicated in the things we profess to love.

Updated: 8:07 p.m. ET July 25, 2006
RICHMOND, Va. - Carl M. Brashear, the first black U.S. Navy diver, who was portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr. in the 2000 film “Men of Honor,” died Tuesday. He was 75.

Brashear, a native of Sonora, Ky., died at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth of respiratory and heart failure, the medical center said.

Brashear retired from the Navy in 1979 after more than 30 years of service. He was the first Navy diver to be restored to full active duty as an amputee, the result of a leg injury he sustained during a salvage operation.

In 1966, Brashear was tasked with recovering a hydrogen bomb that dropped into waters off Spain when two U.S. Air Force planes collided.

During the mission, Brashear was struck below his left knee by a pipe that the crew was using to hoist the bomb out of the water. Brashear was airlifted to a naval hospital where the bottom of his left leg was amputated to avoid gangrene. It later was replaced with a prosthetic leg.

The Navy was ready to retire Brashear from active duty, but he soon began a grueling training program that included diving, running and calisthenics.

“Sometimes I would come back from a run, and my artificial leg would have a puddle of blood from my stump. I wouldn’t go to sick bay because they would have taken me out of the program,” Brashear said in 2002 when he was inducted into the Gallery of Great Black Kentuckians. “Instead, I’d go hide somewhere and soak my leg in a bucket of hot water with salt in it — that’s an old remedy I learned growing up.”

Master diver in 1970
After completing 600-foot to 1,000-foot-deep dives while being evaluated for five weeks at the Experimental Diving Unit in Washington, D.C., Brashear became a master diver in 1970.

Brashear faced an uphill battle when he joined the Navy in 1948 at the age of 17, not long after the U.S. military desegregated.

“I went to the Army office, and they weren’t too friendly,” Brashear said in 2002. “But the Navy recruiter was a lot nicer. Looking back, I was placed in my calling.”

Brashear quickly decided after boot camp that he wanted to become a deep-sea diver.

“Growing up on a farm in Kentucky, I always dreamed of doing something challenging,” he said. “When I saw the divers for the first time, I knew it was just what I wanted.”

In 1954, he was accepted and graduated from the diving program, despite daily battles with discrimination.

“Hate notes were left on my bunk,” he said. “They didn’t want me to make it through the program.”

He went on to train for advanced diving programs before his 1966 incident.

Brashear married childhood friend Junetta Wilcox in 1952 and had four children — Shazanta, DaWayne, Phillip and Patrick — before their divorce in 1978. He later married Hattie R. Elam and Jeanette A. Brundage.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Unfortunate event.

Here is a photo I took while visiting my family that lives out west. We had gathered for the memorial service for my deceased Uncle Ted. This is a photo I took when we were going to the area where Ted is interred. In this photo are his widow, and his two daughters.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

GOD is great to those that believe!

Here are my friends in the red and blue shirts offering thanks to GOD for their blessings. It was magnificent to me to watch entire cities close down when the time came for prayer. One could see cars pulled over onthe side of the road when a person felt it was time for them to pray. Here in the US, we mostly feel that prayer is something to be done without interruption. I saw that prayer, to my friends, is so commonplace that to interrupt someone while they prayed isn’t a terrible crime. One could ask someone in the midst of prayer to comment on something and they would comment without chastizing the questionor for the interruption. I like how Muslims incorporate prayer into their lives.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Soul Photo in Madrid, Spain

Here I am suffering from the effects of a bad ham sandwich in one of the local Cervecerias in Madrid. Why would I choose a beer and a “mixto” ham and cheese sandwich as my breakfast at 0830 on a Sunday in Madrid? I guess I’m a sucker for foreign food.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

I am changing my focus.

That’s kind of interesting that I said that because it is a literal statement as well as a metaphorical one. If I’ve used that last word wrong after I’ve typed this then let me know.

I’ve decided to change my interaction on this site from a mostly text-based weblog to a photo-based weblog. So, unless there is something I consider extremely important, I probably won’t post it. I’ll be posting photos from my collection over the years.

If you have political or news issues that you would like to read here, I offer you the opportunity (as I always have) to post it yourself for discussion. I will comment on the posts, but will rarely initiate non photographical posts.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Original Commodores Member Milan B. Williams Dies

HOUSTON (AP) - Milan B. Williams, one of the original members of the Commodores, died after a long battle with cancer. He was 58.

Williams died Sunday at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said JoAnn Geffen, a spokeswoman for the band.

Williams, who played keyboards, was one of the founding members for the Commodores, which formed in 1968 while all the members were in college at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The group, whose best known member was singer Lionel Richie, had a series of hits during the 1970s and 1980s, including “Brick House,” “Easy” and “Three Times A Lady.” Williams wrote the band’s first hit, “Machine Gun.”
“He was once, twice, three times a brother and we love him. He gave all that he could give to the Commodores. He’ll always be remembered,” said band member Walter Orange.

He is survived by his wife, Melanie Bruno-Williams, and two sons from previous marriages, Jason and Ricci.

His funeral will be on Friday in Okolona, Miss., where Williams was born. There will also be a memorial service in Los Angeles in August.